Distance Education Tools - Learning Management Systems

Learning Management Systems (or LMS)
aka Course Management Systems

We'll login and play around with our moodle site: http://holton.usu.edu/moodle

Moodle 2.0 vs. Blackboard 9 - these are the next versions of these 2 popular LMS tools
- http://mfeldstein.com/moodle-2-0-versus-blackboard-9-09-1/
- See also the mobile learning page for info on the blackboard & moodle mobile clients
Moodle - http://moodle.org/
- Free, open source, PHP & MySQL based. This is the most popular LMS, especially with K-12 schools. Many universities have adopted it as well, including UCLA and others.
- Documentation, Tutorials
- Example moodle courses:
  - http://www.ucopenaccess.org/
  - Our moodle site: http://holton.usu.edu/moodle
- Pros and Cons of Moodle
  - http://blenderwiki.wikispaces.com/Moodle+Pros+and+Cons
- Some example moodle plugins:
  - Feedback - for giving surveys (anonymous or not)
  - DimDim - for webconferencing - shared whiteboard/chat
  - Google Apps - plugin for integrating Google Docs, etc.
  - Nanogong - for audio chat, recording audio
Blackboard - http://www.blackboard.com/
- Commercial, proprietary
- Our blackboard site: http://bb.usu.edu/
- IT's tutorials on Blackboard, Wimba, and other software: http://it.usu.edu/fact/htm/software-tutorials
Others
- Sakai - http://sakaiproject.org/
  - Free, open source, java based
- Desire2Learn
Places to share your courses - you can export your course in a shareable format
- Opencourseware sites like http://ocw.usu.edu/
- Curriki
Criticisms of LMS's, Research
- How course management systems affect teaching
- Envisioning the post-LMS era
Alternatives or Supplements to the LMS
- As we learned, you can use third party sites to support your courses, such as blogs & wikis. See this post about using a custom Drupal site instead of an LMS: http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/2010/05/19/creating-community-in-online-learning/